The purpose of an epilator is to epilate skin, i.e. to remove hair from the skin by pulling it out. An epilator may comprise supplementary tools for modifying the characteristics of its epilating function or for providing functions other than epilation, such as vibrating the skin to alleviate pain, massaging the skin after epilation, and peeling the skin for removing ingrown hair.
Various methods of alleviating pain caused by extracting hair from the skin are known in the art.
WO 2004/054401 A1 describes an epilator of the type mentioned above. This epilator can comprise different attachments designed to cover different percentages of an epilating member in order to more or less reduce the epilation rate and thereby the pain level.
An alternative way of alleviating pain consists in stimulating nerves in the skin immediately before and while the hair is pulled out, as described in EP 0808 114 B1 and references therein. To this end, EP 0808 114 B1 proposes a vibrating member arranged next to the epilating member.
It is an object of the invention to further develop an epilator of the type mentioned in the opening paragraph, such that it comprises attachments with different skin contact surfaces as well as means for stimulating the nerves in the skin so as to effectively alleviate pain.
This object is achieved by the characteristic features defined in claim 1. Further specifications and preferred embodiments of the invention are outlined in the dependent claims.